Turns Out, I Wasn’t Buying It Even Then

In my last post I included Solzhenitsyn’s criticisms of the idea of situation ethics or relative morality.  When writing that post I was put in mind of my having read Joeseph Fletcher’s book “Situation Ethics: The New Morality” for a sociology class.  That would have been in the late 60s (the copyright date is 1966).  My memories were that I was swayed by the arguments in that book to look at my views of morality differently.  Turns out I actually still have my original copy (price on cover: $1.95) with my notes from the time.

My notes throughout the book reveal that I seem to have open mindedly considered as well as questioned the arguments and theses of the book, but that in the end I wasn’t sold.  Indeed, I seem to have at least intuited the criticisms spoken by Solzhenitsyn 5 or 10 years later.  The inside cover includes my handwritten comment that reads as follows:

whole book, & idea appears as just a way of rationalizing your sins, and “is trying to get out of it.”

makes us all out to be gods, who can choose to take a life for example, but we aren’t and we can’t.

Seems very slanted.  Only uses a very few Biblical examples over and over.

I don’t recall myself as being that perceptive.  But maybe it takes one looking back with later experience and history to see what one actually knew in the past.  The fact that my memory was that I had a fairly positive and transformative reaction to the book when I studied it is telling as to how the book and this new philosophy of relativism must have taken hold within our culture. 

Now, looking back with what I know and what I see around me today, I find the book truly frightening.  I see how right Solzhenitsyn was when he noted that the Communist ideology of relative (or class and identity) morality was a successful tool in its (and today’s Leftist Progressive ideology) anti-humanity crusade to gain power only for itself and gain the ability to fully manipulate the rest of us.

THE LURE OF SITUATIONAL MORALITY

The back of my copy of Situation Ethics touts it as “a manifesto of individual freedom and individual responsibility, elaborated within an ethic of love, which extricates modern man from rigid, archaic rules and codes.”

That was the 60s.  Think how enlightened that sounded.  “Individual freedom and individual responsibility”: isn’t that what people of the 60s were discovering – their ability to be themselves, to not conform and be like everyone else?  “Elaborated within an ethic of love”:  love one another was a sound and phrase of the times, how could that be bad?  And with these positive slogans we will “extricate modern man from rigid, archaic rules and codes”:  those would be the absolutes, the good and evil that served us well since civilized time began, the absolutes whose removal, Solzhenitsyn notes, leave us with nothing but the manipulation of one by another.

On page 56 of the book one finds a summary of the six propositions on which its philosophy of situation ethics rests: “The first one pins down the nature of value.  The second reduces all values to love.   The third equates love and justice.  The fourth frees love from sentimentality.  The fifth states the relation between means and ends.  The sixth authenticates every decision within its own content.” 

According to the author, “The new morality, situation ethics, declares that anything and everything is right or wrong, according to the situation.”  The author declares this new morality is not new, but is Bible-based and, like so many false prophets before and after him, he takes selected quotes from the Bible out of context to justify his philosophy that essentially comes down to:  do what feels good for you – if it feels good, it’s OK.

WHERE DID IT LEAD US

I think that in the 60s most who considered it didn’t notice the possible consequences of what embracing situational or relative morality might mean.  It is, I believe, a part of the lives of most of us today, and the Left has fully embraced it.

I think most everyone today will ignore otherwise rigid rules in at least some situations.  And probably people have always done this to some extent (is there anyone who has never told “a little white lie”?). 

But when there are absolute rules of right and wrong, good and evil, the breaking of these rules is less prevalent and is accompanied by some sort of guilt and understanding of one’s own wrongdoing.  When those “rigid” rules are gone one is ultimately left to do whatever one wants, regardless of what may be right or wrong for others.

Today, beyond more prevalent acceptance of excusing rule breaking in some circumstances, there are those who seem to believe that there really are no rules – they truly believe that a situation itself is the governing body in all circumstances. 

How else would we find people justifying theft and robbery (because they are just taking what they need), justifying the killing of police (because they are allegedly systemically racist), justifying violent riots called protests when they claim to serve a popular cause, even when they hurt or kill innocent bystanders, businesses, and government buildings (BLM riots after Floyd killing) but demanding severe punishment, even death to those whose protests violated the perimeter of the Capital building for a cause out of favor with the Left?

How else would we find people justifying the silencing of opposing viewpoints that they find uncomfortable, the disinviting of conservative speakers to college campuses because their views are offensive to Left-leaning students and faculty, the justification of harassing, namecalling, and sometimes physically attacking individuals who speak out in opposition to Leftist causes (most recently those who oppose CRT)? 

How else would we find the entertainment business and the elite and progressive individuals who profit from it justifying a daily diet of “entertainment” that sexualizes women and children while then acting as if they are horrified when someone whose politics are contrary to theirs commits even the slightest “MeToo” violation?

How else would we find the Left asserting its support for women’s rights and equal opportunity, then undermining those assertions when a biological male wants to compete as a female?   

How else would we find people believing that they can claim to be a devout follower of Catholicism yet be pro-abortion (a mortal sin in that faith) and demand they still be allowed to participate in the holy eucharist which requires adherence to the Catholic liturgy?

How else would we have a President requesting that social media censor and ban any posting that does not speak the truth, yet giving no criteria for what is “truth” or who will decide if a posting meets it, resulting, for example, in the idea that any suggestion that the Wuhan Virus came from the Wuhan lab should have been banned as untruthful, even though that now is the prevalent scientific theory?  How can science and humanity progress if no one is allowed to question or to present alternate ideas and theories?

THE RESULT OF EMBRACING RELATIVE MORALITY IS NOT PRETTY AND IT IS ANTI-HUMANITY

The above list could go on and on.  It includes just some of the examples of situation ethics in action that immediately come to mind.  I am sure every reader of this blog can think of many others.

We are destroying ourselves while believing that we have raised ourselves to some higher level of love.  Self-love seems to be the guiding principle – open any lifestyle magazine, any Sunday supplement, any self-help blog, any TV morning-show type supplement and you will hear about the importance of “self-care.”    That is where situational morality has taken us – to place the self as a god and the center of one’s universe. 

That’s fine if you live alone on some mountain top, but when two or more people come together who believe the situation and their feelings govern all even to the extent of justifying murder of the other, someone is going to have to determine whose self-love is superior. 

Once people have been manipulated into giving up absolute moral values, they need someone in power to decide what is OK in this or that situation.  That is where the progressive Leftist philosophy comes in.  They believe they can and should decide for each and every one of us, not because they know or care what is best, but because their philosophy requires and entitles them to do so.  They will take away humanity and replace it with manipulation and indifference.  As Solzhenitsyn so aptly noted, their goal is to destroy our social order.  The back cover of the Situation Ethics book essentially admits that as its intent.

My 1960s notes on Situation Ethics were more accurate than I understood at the time. I didn’t buy into it then, even though I thought I had.  Perhaps you didn’t buy into Situation Ethics either when you were first introduced.  But when there is what Solzhenitsyn calls a “constant dinning” and what we would today call propaganda with a daily barrage of one viewpoint taught from almost birth, it is easy to lose what one knows to be true and to buy into what we inherently know to be a mistake.   

We are not gods and relative morality, no matter how honorable and humane and even holy it may sound, is nothing more than a way to destroy the human essence and individuality and replace it with an ugly and oppressive power wielded by an elite and selfish few.  Each one of us who has let this destructive situation ethics into our lives needs to exorcise it immediately.

The Warning is Still Relevant and Even More Urgent if Anyone Will Listen

 

Is it possible or impossible to transmit the experience of those who have suffered to those who have yet to suffer?  Can one part of humanity learn from the bitter experience of another or can it not?  Is it possible or impossible to warn someone of danger?

               -Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Warning to the West

 The above words express much of the frustration Solzhenitsyn must have felt when he came to America after his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974.  The above quote is from a speech given to leaders of the AFL-CIO in New York on July 9, 1975, during which he tried to warn this group of American workers and leaders of the dangers inherent in Communism and Socialism.

The sad thing, the similarly frustrating thing, is that most of Solzhenitsyn’s words and warnings ring true as even more relevant today.  The frightening thing is that once again no one is really hearing the words, perhaps because without having experienced what is being warned of one cannot hear the warning.

And yet, there are those perhaps fools who will keep shouting the warning to anyone who will listen, hoping perhaps beyond hope that someone will hear at least a small whisper, that someone will awake and they will awake others and perhaps the impending danger can be avoided.  We will see.

In the meantime, I would like to go through some of the key statements from this particular Solzhenitsyn speech with notes on how they reflect very clearly what is happening in America today.  It is not possible to read them without recognizing things we see all around us.

[Notes.  The full text of this speech can be found, collected with other of his speeches in the book Warning to the West by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1976.  It can also be found in the July-August 1975 edition of the AFL-CIO Free Trade Union News beginning at page 17, and available at this LINK.  The page numbers to which I refer below are pages of the speech in the book Warning to the West.  While I generally use the term “Communism” as did Solzhenitsyn in his speech, one should understand that the basic concepts warned of are also aspects of Socialism and Democratic Socialism.]

“The whole world can read, everyone is literate, yet somehow no one wants to understand.  Humanity acts as if it does not understand what Communism is, as if it does not want to understand, is not capable of understanding.” (p. 54)

I don’t know about you, but that to me sounds like most of the people around me in this country.  We have around 1/3 of our young people thinking Socialism/Communism is a great system.  We have leaders and politicians pushing a big government Socialist agenda and no one even seems to bat an eye.  Perhaps no one wants to know because it is too disconcerting; it is easier just to go about enjoying one’s daily life without paying attention to what is going on around one.  Or, perhaps as Solzhenitsyn suggests, “the essence of Communism is quite beyond the limits of human understanding.”

What is the “essence” of Communism?  Solzhenitsyn reminds us that it never changes. (p. 55) Sure, while during the Soviet era it was the proletariat vs. the bourgeoisie and today those labels have been replaced with the appropriate identity group labels of the day, the basic rhetoric has not changed.  Communism as well as socialism assert that once the evil group has been overthrown, “the most happy and radiant society will then arise.”  But no Communist leaders ever describe concretely what that new society will be like.  

If today’s Left successfully put into place their many social justice and new world order programs, do you have any idea what the new society that they wish to create will look like?  Will the promises of a rosy new world of peace, joy, and happiness be sustainable, or will it look more like the many other failed Communist and Socialist regimes with negligible resources, corrupt and selfish leaders, starving and unhappy populace?  Perhaps it will look a bit like the Cuba of today that the people who have actually suffered and are suffering this brave new world are risking their very lives to protest against.

“Marxism has always opposed freedom.” (p. 57) “Communism is anti-humanity.” (p. 59)

According to Solzhenitsyn Communism reduces all the complexities of human nature to “crude economic processes.”  Man is “reduced to matter.”   Solzhenitsyn lays out one way in which this is successfully accomplished:  the destruction of traditional concepts of morality, good, and evil.  These concepts were once seen as absolutes, but Communism considers morality to be relative and a class matter. 

“Depending upon circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of hundreds of thousands, could be good or could be bad.  It all depends upon class ideology.  (p. 58)

Communism has been highly successful in spreading the concept of situation ethics and the relativity of good and evil.  Indeed, people who profess absolutist concepts of good and evil are often seen as some character from the dark ages; the concepts are seen as old-fashioned and laughable. 

Why is it OK for BLM to conduct violent protests but largely peaceful protests from the political right are condemned?  Why do some large cities excuse shop-lifting if done by certain identity groups or excuse theft and violence if it was because the individual “needed” what was stolen?  Why are acts by the “victim” identity groups against the “victimizer” identity groups excused?  Why do the laws apply to some and not others?  These are questions asked in this country every day, and yet the real answers, the underlying source of the destruction of moral standards, are often ignored.

“And who defines this ideology?” Who determines when something is wrong or right when there is no clear or absolute standard?  In America today it seems to be a combination of Leftist political leaders, big corporations, and media.  It is not the people.

As Solzhenitsyn notes, the problem is that if we are deprived of the basic concepts of good and evil, deprived of standards of conduct that apply to all, nothing but the manipulation of one another is left.  And that is just fine with the Communists because they will take the power and do that manipulation while the rest of us “will sink to the status of animals.” (p. 58)  We seem to have a good cadre of Leftist leaders who are more than willing, indeed eager, to take all power and become our manipulators.  

“But what is amazing is that apart from all its writings, Communism has offered a multitude of examples for modern man to see.” (p. 59)

Solzhenitsyn gives numerous examples of the horrors of Communism taken from the time of his speech.  We can find equally timely ones today.  In China there are the Uyghur internment and forced labor camps that also likely include torture and death.  Actually, had anyone noticed, China was already becoming an example in 1975: “China is characterized by all the same [Communist] traits: massive compulsory labor which is not paid in accordance with its value; work on holidays; forced living in communes; and the incessant dinning of slogans and dogmas that abolish the human essence and deny all individuality to man.” (p. 64)

But we also have others.  Venezuela comes to mind:  the socialist/communist country that promised a great society to its people but that has collapsed to the detriment of its populace.  North Korea is another whose horrors are only partially known.  We have other socialist/communist authoritarian regimes that have all begun with a promise of some wonderful new world and which are in some form just the opposite for their people.  And we have Cuba whose people are right now trying to rise up against the horrors of Communism but who might just as likely be destroyed like any other group in Communism’s history who dared to speak out against its social order. 

Yet we have people that ignore these examples.  The Administration downplays the Cuban revolt, ignoring the fact that the essence of the people’s complaint is Communism.  We do not stand up to the treatment of the Uyghurs in China.  We turn a blind eye to the many Socialist and Communist atrocities around the world.  Yes, it is amazing that the examples are there, but too many choose not to see.

“All the apparent differences among the Communist Parties of the world are imaginary.  All are united on one point:  your social order must be destroyed.” 

(pp. 64-5)

And isn’t that just what our progressive Left, our Democratic Socialists, our Communists in this country are attempting to do with their many social justice and other policies and initiatives, their CRT, their destruction and erasure of history, their cancelling of unwelcome voices? Isn’t the essence of their many policies an attempt to destroy our social order?  And yet no one seems to notice.  Solzhenitsyn does not find it surprising that the world does not understand this.  “Even the socialists, who are the closest to Communists, do not understand it.”  Humanity cannot grasp the evil until they have experienced it themselves and by that time it is too late because they are dead.

“All of the Communist Parties, upon attaining power, have become completely merciless.  But at the stage before they achieve power, it is necessary to use disguises.” (p. 66)

We are bombarded with social justice.  Equity.  The ideal classless society.  The Left and their policies will fix everything for us.  The current Administration is well on its way.  The word “Communism” is not used.  Sometimes we hear “democratic Socialism” with the emphasis on the word “democratic.”  These are disguises that do not cover the truth of what we are facing.  But what are all these fine sounding things but the disguises of Communism.  The classless society is one in which every voice is suppressed by those in power. (p. 69)  

Suppression of speech is becoming pretty well installed in this country as the Administration, the Left, MSM, and Big Tech/Social Media all join hands to suppress voices that they do not like.  People accept it in the name of some sort of civility.   But it is nothing more than the Communist (and socialist) bait and switch.  The goal, the ideology of Communism remains the same: “to destroy your system, to destroy the way of life known in the West.” (p. 70) And to suppress any and all voices that do not speak the party line.

So many Americans buy into the beauteous sounding establishment of a new world order of peace and prosperity for all.  When we live in a country that, while imperfect, is indeed free and aspires to the highest goals of humanity, a country that is prosperous and generous, it is hard to imagine that everyone would not be behind a brave new world that looked like a perfected America.  Yet in reality, that brave new world requires totalitarianism and totalitarianism is the antithesis of America; it is the sort of world to which the disguises of Communism will lead us.

“We are approaching a major turning point in world history, in the history of civilization. . . . It is a juncture at which settled concepts suddenly become hazy, lose their precise contours, at which our familiar and commonly used words lose their meaning. . . . [T]he hierarchy of values which we have venerated, and which we use to determine what is important to us and what causes our hearts to beat is starting to rock and may collapse.” (p. 79)

Solzhenitsyn saw it coming in the 1970s.  It is here now. 

Solzhenitsyn saw two crises occurring simultaneously:  one political, one spiritual.  He noted that the entire world would have to face these crises but that it was America that would have to bear the burden of fighting against them. 

“Your [America’s] leaders will need profound intuition, spiritual foresight, high qualities of mind and soul.” (p. 80) Oh, if only that were true, if only that were the description of our leaders today.  We do not have such leaders.  They either do not see the problem, or ignore it, or are part of it.  The current Administration, essentially governed by the Left, has already seemingly signed onto the Communist agenda, whether they understand what they are doing or not.

Our political leaders, our media, our entertainment, our denial of what is going on around us, our willingness to accept without thought what we are told and do without thought what the Left desires, perhaps because we cannot see the dangers or perhaps because we do not want to, all of these things are leading us to disaster. And yet, “a concentration of world evil is taking place, full of hatred for humanity.  It is fully determined to destroy your society.” (p. 82)

Solzhenitsyn notes that those born in Communist countries are born slaves.  Some are currently striving for freedom.  But we, born in the USA, are born free.  So why, in the words of Solzhenitsyn, would we let ourselves become slaves?  Why do we help those who would become our slaveowners? (p. 84)

The why is stated at the start of this essay.  It seems that for those who live in a country where one can live a free and independent life, the dangers seem imaginary.  It is impossible to warn someone of the danger.  It is hard to ask someone to be vigilant when the danger to them seems unreal.  Solzhenitsyn has given us a heads up of what is to come – advice from one who knows and has experienced evil given to us who have not.  Yet, if the free and independent people of this country do not wake up, do not man the watchtowers, it will be too late for vigilance, too late for warnings from those who know what the Left, the Socialists, the Communists are truly seeking and what havoc they will wrest upon us and our world. It is time that we listen and see what is really going on.